The Red Cup
Francezca C. Kwe
There are cups from which we all drink, such as that from which pours our shared suffering in these dark days when no one is safe from the government’s crackdown on
its enemies, and there are cups such as the one lodged in my pelvis as I wait to see Dr. Sacramento at her clinic. It is nearly six, time for the evening news to console us by telling us all is
well, the price of rice has gone down, and so have the margins of poverty, and the army trucks from Camp Aguinaldo are on their way to replenish the checkpoints. I have to call my husband to see if
he is all right, if he has gotten home from one of his meetings as the head of the now-outlawed Association Against Forced Disappearances, meetings which now—since the state has clamped down
on protest and di
